CONSUMER PROTECTION/CYBERWAR: “U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Friday [9-15-17] she has begun an investigation into Equifax’s massive data breach and, along with 11 other Democratic senators, introduced a bill to give consumers the ability to freeze their credit for free.
Warren, who has built a reputation as a fierce consumer champion, also signaled in a letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the agency she helped create in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, that it may require extra powers in order to ensure closer federal oversight of credit reporting agencies.
Although securing new powers for the CFPB could be a tough sell in a Republican-dominated Congress, the attention from Senator Warren and the growing public furor over the Equifax data leak could help protect the CFPB from conservative efforts to weaken the agency, said consumer advocates…
Warren also wrote letters to Equifax and its rival credit monitoring agencies TransUnion and Experian, federal regulators, and the Government Accountability Office for information to see if new federal legislation was needed to protect consumers.
Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Subcommittee for Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection, said the proposed bill would stop companies like Equifax from charging consumers for freezing and unfreezing access to their credit files. A credit freeze restricts access to an individual’s credit report, which can stop account fraud when thieves apply for credit using another person’s information.”
-Chris Sanders and Michelle Price, “Senator Warren introduces Equifax bill, launches industry probe,” Reuters, Sept. 15, 2017 03:12am